Building a Internet Bridge Updated 9/12/17

 We are working on building a bridge.  Not the kind that goes over water, but one that goes through the air.  I am going to attempt to build a wireless internet bridge and bring in wireless internet from a mountain a few miles away that is not in our line of site.

  Our internet service has been limited to cell phone or satellite due to living in the country.  I don't hear anyone having anything good to say about satellite, and cell phone is very expensive. My cell phone data package from Verizon cost $130 per month.

  Our neighbor 600 feet away has line of site to a wireless internet provider and has agreed to let us put a dish on his property with a relay to bring it to our property.  I have tried to get around this, but it looks to be the only option.

  The plan calls for installing a pole on our road right of way with a internet provider provided dish to bring in the wireless signal line of sight from the microwave tower.  We will then connect that to a Ubiquiti Loco M5 antenna that is aimed towards our house at the bottom of the hill.  This setup will be powered by a 12 volt battery with a solar panel and pwm controller to charge the battery and a Drok microelectric dc/dc converter with a LED screen which will step up the voltage from the 12V to 24V to power both of the antennas.

  On the house end, there will be a matching Ubiquiti loco M5 antenna powered by another Drok dc/dc converter running off of my house batteries.  That will go to a wireless router inside the house to bring in the internet.  I haven't determined which router I will go with yet.

Here are links to what I'm planning to use: <iframe style="width:120px;height:240px;" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ac&ref=tf_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=happyhigdons-20&marketplace=amazon&region=US&placement=B00HG1CTDW&asins=B00HG1CTDW&linkId=WW5LPJW5CF2FBHYG&show_border=true&link_opens_in_new_window=true">
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<iframe style="width:120px;height:240px;" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ac&ref=tf_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=happyhigdons-20&marketplace=amazon&region=US&placement=B00BYTEHQO&asins=B00BYTEHQO&linkId=7SXOCKMCXTXILHHI&show_border=true&link_opens_in_new_window=true">
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  Update:  It has been in and operational now for over a year and it works!  I first used two 6 volt L16 batteries wired together in series to give me 12 volts.  The batteries were two batteries I removed from the house's solar system after they each lost a cell.  Fully charged they only put out 10.5 volts.  I could have recycled them and got $16 each (which I eventually did), but I figured I'd get my money's worth first.   For 18 months they chugged along powering the remote site.  At first they would give me 3 days of internet, in the end they would give a day.

  The drok voltage converter works down to 5V and will convert up to 30V I believe.  I think the antenna's are 20V if I remember right.  It shut off when the batteries reached 5V, then I recharged with a generator and battery charger.

  This past December I installed a forklift battery for the house, so I took two 6V golf cart batteries and swapped them for the L16's.  The batteries are connected to a Pulse Width Modulated (PWM) solar charge controller that also has a load disconnect.  When the batteries discharge to a certain level it turns off the load (the antennas).  This setup gives us 5 days of internet in between charges.

  I still don't have the solar panels connected, though I do have them.  I bought a pair of old panels from Mike Oehler's estate after he passed away.  (I wrote about visiting his underground houses in another blog post.)

  The install went pretty much as I had planned.  Due to my head injury I couldn't do programming of the antenna's, so I paid the local internet provider to do that for me.

  So how has it worked?  Well, mixed reviews.  When it works, it works well.  Sometimes weather conditions affect it's performance, but MOST of the time it works well as long as it is charged.  When I install the solar panels that should take care of the main cause of internet outages which is the batteries running down.  Also, the site is shaded a good portion of the day, so it may take a larger solar array than what I have for it.

  The system draws 1 amp per hour on the remote site, as does the one on the house end.  The drok converter is just big enough to power the two antennas and is actually more efficient than the Power Over Ethernet (POE) injector that is 110V on the house end.  (I ended up using the one that came with the antenna for the house since the house already has a 110V inverter powering the house.)  If I later upgrade to a inverter that has a sleep mode on it, I will switch out the POE with a drok so that the load doesn't cause the inverter to "wake up" when that is the only load drawn on the system.

  I've found that the system doesn't like to be turned on and off very often.  That has caused a lot of grief.  At first to conserve power I switched it off whenever it wasn't in use, but the hassle trying to get it rebooted and going again was too much.  In theory it shouldn't matter, but this is one case the theory didn't match reality.

  I think the system was installed July 2015, but don't quote me on any of the dates or timeframes I've written here.  Due to my memory problems it is too foggy!

  Update 9/12/17:

  It has now been over two years since the system was installed and it has been chugging away day in, day out.  Our intermittent internet problems were traced down to bad internet cables.  They were replaced by the internet provider twice, both times free of charge.  Now it works reliably.

  This past weekend I mounted solar panels 70' away from the relay where the panels could be in the sun.  I welded up a tilting framework that has three settings: Winter, Spring/Fall, Summer.  It is a simple matter to pull quick release pins and change it.  I used scrap steel from my job, they formerly were part of a crate for a $750,000 Pratt & Whitney turbine aircraft engine.  Now they hold two 33 watt solar panels that were built in 1979 that I picked up from Mike Oehler's estate for $30.  (Thank you Alex for selling them to me, they are being put to good use!)  They put out 5.5 amps 12V DC in direct sun.

  For running the 12Vs to the relay, I am using 1 1/4" electrical conduit that has a 10 gauge extension cord inside of it along with a 3/16" galvanized cable.  The extension cord has 3 10 gauge wires in it, so I figure if I need to run more power I'll use the galvanized cable as an additional negative ground.  The choice of all the components was based mostly on price!  Everything was pretty much free, salvaged either from work or cleaning up a couple of places for people and getting the materials free. I did have to buy the couplings at .79 each.

  I also installed a voltmeter so I can check on the state of charge without toting my multimeter or hygrometer up there every time I want to see how it is doing.  Everything also got a coat of green rust-oleum paint to protect it from the weather and help it blend in a little better.  The paint was mismatched at the local hardware store so I paid $5 for a gallon.

 Here is a picture of the solar panel mount.  It has a hinge welded in at the front and quick detach pins on the back so the angle can be changed in under 2 minutes.

Here is the battery box with the solar battery charger and the controls for the antennas.  The dish antenna is the once that receives and the flat antenna mounted to the t-post on the right is the one that broadcast down the hill to my house.

Jeff